ITZI Conference 2019: No Pearl without Grit

Information

5-8 September 2019, Netherland

This group is for announcements, discussion, and information relevant to the conference and to help organisers and attenders stay in contact. This is going to be a very special event and there will be plenty going on in the lead up.

Buddhism and therapy are both centrally concerned with the problem of suffering and the challenges involved in arriving at a liberation of mind and an awakening to new possibilities. In addressing this theme we can share many perspectives, methods and theories that seek to bring together the insights of Buddhism with the anxieties, tragedies and opportunities of modern life. Following upon the first two successful conferences, this meeting will be a time for learning, sharing, reflection and building connections.

The last conference included many moving moments as well as deeply informative presentations. The balance between serious engagement and informal discussion in this style of meeting provides a rich compost for new growth, connection and stimulation.

This is a print from a linoleum block printed on a monoprint background. This was inspired by my time last year at the old abbey at Drongenen. I have many memories of the conference. One of the things I enjoyed doing was walking the grounds at night or very early in the morning. Seeing the lit tower at night was so peaceful.

One humorous highlight happened on Sunday evening after the conference had ended. I had elected to stay the extra evening and decided to go to dinner with some friends from Belgium who had traveled to meet Myokei and myself. On all nights but Sunday the front gate closed at 11P, however on Sunday it closed at 5P and I didn't know it. When I returned to the abbey the gate was locked up tight. I rang the bell and no one answered. I was stuck all alone, my friends had left me at the restaurant thinking there would be no trouble.

Being the resourceful individual I am, and with my long history of engaging in various acts of protest and on one occasion in the 60s of breaking into the Louisiana State Senate in protest of the Vietnam war and completely forgetting that I am not twenty years old anymore I proceeded to climb the fence, about 10feet. Fortunately I can report I managed the climb and the jump down unharmed. Perhaps it was because I was wearing my samue.

Anyway I do hope you will join us next year for the 3rd annual ITZI conference.

On the website we shall, as last time, have a portrait gallery of presenters. If you presented last time and intend to do so again we shall use the same photo as last time unless you send us a new one. If you would like to present this time, please send us a proposal and photo.

Born: September 13, 1919, London, United KingdomDied: October 10, 2018

Mary was a dear friend and inspiration. I first met her when she came to a meditation class I was leading. Her husband had recently died and she was grieving. She did not need meditation, she just needed to grieve and that be OK, which it definitely was, but she continued to come to meetings and made a…

I am currently leading courses on Buddhist psychology here in Seoul, Korea, but as I am putting the course onto this site as we go along, members of La Ville au Roi (Eleusis) are also responding so it is a bit as though the course is going on in several countries at the same time which is nice.

For fifteen years the writer Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Gulag for participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He endured six of those years enslaved in the gold mines of Kolyma, one of the coldest and most hostile places on earth. While he was awaiting sentencing, one of his short stories was…